Producers: Damien Chazelle, Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen

Director- Damien Chazelle

Star Cast- Ryang Gosling, Aurelien Gaya, Brian d’Arcy James, Christopher Abbott, Ciarán Hinds, Claire Foy, Corey Stoll, Ethan Embry, Jason Clarke, Jon Bernthal, Kyle Chandler

Genre: Biography, Drama

Rating- ***

Visceral Biopic!

Jyothi Venkatesh

First Man is the true story of Neil Armstrong, a quiet engineer who rose through the ranks of NASA’s 1960s space programme to become the first man on the moon — in a journey that includes professional and personal tragedies. It is the riveting story of NASA’s mission to land a man on the moon, focusing on Neil Armstrong during the years 1961-1969. A visceral, first-person account, based on the book by James R. Hansen, the movie will explore the sacrifices of Armstrong who undertook one of the most dangerous missions in history.

It is quite different from Whiplash and La La Land, Damien Chazelle’s first two films and yet another study of obsession and the compromises that inevitably brings. Ryang Gosling as Neil Armstrong renders a true account of the travails and tribulations that Neil underwent. The movie’s challenge is to pare back the outer layers of Armstrong’s privacy without violating it. Especially  brilliant is the brief, solitary shot of him weeping after he and his wife, Janet ( Claire Foy), lose their 2-year-old daughter, Karen, to cancer, which reveals how effective are Ryang and Claire Foy as real performers.

The film relies heavily on platitudes about the future of man, of looking to the sky and journeying farther. On the flipside, with a running time of nearly two hours, it is a film which could have been trimmed by editing it slickly to make it riveting but ends up a visceral biopic, which has come out at least a decade later when there is less curiosity and enthusiasm among the audiences for such biopics with a slow pace.

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